Undergraduate study

Professional Development Project

All our MEng students undertake a Professional Development Project (PDP) in the second semester of their third taught year. This gives our students a unique experience with many choosing to study overseas at one of our partner universities.

The PDP can be done in one of three ways:

As a technical project at a company. This differs from the placement year in that students will work on a single project and write a report which is assessed as part of their degree. Placement students, on the other hand, often undertake several projects;

As an individual research project carried out at Loughborough under the supervision of an academic

As an individual research project carried out at a partner university overseas. Most of our MEng students take this option.

"The PDP has been the best part of my four years of chemical engineering. I am loving my research project, I am meeting many incredible people and I am enjoying living in a new city."

Arianna Rech

Overseas Professional Development Project

We have a number of exchange agreements with overseas universities both in European countries and further afield, which enable our students to undertake their project overseas and experience life in a different culture.

We have particularly close links with universities in France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Germany and Belgium through the Erasmus programme, and outside the EU in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. Students are supervised locally on their projects by an academic member of staff at the university. The local supervisors always speak good English, but students on placement in Europe naturally become very fluent in the local language just by the virtue of living in the country.